Ice days

We had ice Monday night and lots of fun playing outside on it with the neighbors on Tuesday. Nicholas played and then worked from home. I put Jason in his carseat in the stroller and played, too. Our steep driveway finally had an upside! Lots of neighbors came to sled!

 

The next day, we were off again and were able to catch snowflakes on our tongues and make ice balls with the neighbors.

Why we're doing fine

1. Nicholas 
• Thank goodness for Nicholas's cool attitude and willingness to help. He puts Leo to bed every night, never acts like anything is too big a deal, and is keeping a super positive attitude about all tantrums, messes, and my craziness. He is also cleaning, folding, and in general just doing more than he had to pre baby.
2. Mom
• Thank goodness my mom got us over the hump of crazy hormones and getting into the swing of having a new baby in the house! Thank goodness she left cookies and convenience meals in the freezer! Thank goodness she booked a trip for two weeks instead of one, otherwise she would have missed our late baby!
3. The neighbors
• I am beyond grateful for my bunco club of neighbors!! Twelve delicious meals -- seven in a row -- and then the rest sporatically as we adjust to dinnertime with a newborn, two hungry kids, one tired mom, and a dad who worked all day and then came home to chaos! I LOVE this neighborhood and the lovely women who have included me into it!
4. A cool attitude
• Sort of. I am trying to keep things in perspective and haven't cried much about being tired, achy, the house messy, etc. We're keeping pretty cool around here.
5. Sweet kids
• Really they are all taking it in stride! I am beyond grateful that no one is being aggressive or jealous!

Days at home

We're falling into a pretty good routine. Olivia and Leo are doing so amazingly well as far as not being jealous, and everyone is accepting the new normal pretty well. I am not going to write a lot...just post a lot of the pictures of happenings in the past week or so:

Leo loves "soup corn" and wanted to eat the whole pot by himself.

Every night, Jason helps me read to Olivia. Sometimes he even gets in bed with her, which she loves!

The Supermom myth is dispelled. Wednesday, I hit Nicholas's car on the way out of the driveway on the way to preschool. Whoops! The kids loved the tow truck, though!

Leo loves all of his orange kitchen utensils that he got for his birthday! Ha!

Silly Leo and Daddy photos!

Olivia painted this mug for Nicholas's student from UA who has come to work at ABB for a bit.

The Cars movie projector and book birthday presents were a hit with the big kids! Seriously, the kids are learning to play on their own in a whole new way now!

Olivia loves taking my phone and taking pictures on it. Here are some from the gorgeous weekend! (Jason likes the Moby wrap I borrowed from a friend, but still hates the Ergo infant insert.)

Sweet Jason in his cute little sweater outfit!

 Friday I ventured out with all three kids to do a few errands. It went remarkably well, though I had to stop and nurse a couple of times. The big kids did great "reading" on their own at the library.

 

Reasons things are going so well for me: ibuprofen and caffeine! And I can button my jeans! Hooray! I love not being pregnant!

More sweet Jason photos in the light.

Jason's first bath:

 

And Olivia and Leo had dentist appointments on Thursday. Olivia did great getting a real cleaning and x-rays. She has two loose bottom teeth!! Her permanent teeth are pushing right through! Leo was much less thrilled about the process and didn't even get charged for the visit.

More sweet Jason photos. He loves to be held and is most the time. He is nursing really well and often. I hate pumping, so I have decided not to this go around. Except that I did Sunday morning so that the kids could feed him. I didn't have enough hands to take pictures, too, but Olivia was super excited to feed her brother!